Loren Long, the illustrator of Love, and I sat down and we were talking about each little vignette in the book. And when we got to this moment where the text sort of ended up being the boy under the piano, initially he told me, “I was thinking of a Norman Rockwell moment where there’s the death of a pet and they’re sort of gathered around, mourning the passing of a valued pet.”
And I was like, “Oh, yeah, that could be good.” But then I had this instinct to ask him, “What would you do if you could do anything in this moment?” And I remember we were sitting at lunch in Atlanta at a conference and he paused for a very long time. And then he looked up at me with this look of like pure honesty. And he said, “Alcohol has really harmed my family. There’s a lot of problems that have come from that. And when I think of this text, I think of that part of my family.”
And he said, “I just don’t know if we can do that in a picture book.” And I was like, “I don’t think we can either, but let’s try.” So that is why there is an empty tumbler on top of the piano, suggesting that perhaps the father had been drinking.
And here is what I think is important about that. There are so many kids out there today who are under the metaphorical piano, for the exact same reason. It might not be alcohol, but it might be some other version of that and it’s affecting the family.
And that is a diversity that we don’t often talk about is that so many kids have trauma in their family lives caused from substance abuse. So that was part of what we wanted to sort of suggest in there. And now we tried to make it quiet because some kids don’t even notice that. And that’s okay too. That’s not their entry point into the story. But some older kids feel seen, and some older kids ask questions. And I think that layer needs to be there, too.
